


Sempiternal

by Kittenshift17



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood Play, Character Death, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-04-23 08:25:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19147243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittenshift17/pseuds/Kittenshift17
Summary: Following Spike's sacrifice to save the world, Buffy is a wreck, unable to deal with the grief for her loss of the man she loved. When she approaches Willow to pursue a passing fancy from happier times, the two of them find a solution to test if Buffy and Spike might actually have been bound by the Red Thread of Fate, and to allow Buffy ten more chances to see her lost lover. Flung backward in time to moments of her choosing, Buffy bears only a flimsy magical tether to her own time, and the knowledge that she loves Spike and wants him back. Too bad the Spike he was before the chip and his return to Sunnydale have other ideas about his feelings for the petite blonde Vampire Slayer cropping up randomly throughout his unlife to confuse him and allure him in equal measure.





	1. Prologue

 

“Buffy… are you sure about this?” Willow Rosenburg asked quietly, peering at Buffy across the double bed of Buffy’s bedroom.

Buffy blinked steadily.

“I’m sure, Will,” Buffy nodded quietly.

“But… but… he’s evil, Buffy,” Willow argued quietly. “I mean, like, killed thousands of people, destroyed lives, unrepentantly harmed others, evil. He…”

Buffy sighed softly, looking pointedly at Willow and waiting for her to make her point.

“I’m not trying to… you know, be all bad moody and blargh about it like Giles and Xander,” Willow held up her hands placatingly at Buffy’s expression. “But… Buffy, he’s evil!”

“I know that, Will,” Buffy sighed again. “Of course, I know that. Do you think I haven’t tried to talk myself out of this? I mean, it’s worse than when I thought I loved Angel and then couldn’t kill him as Angelus, but I just… I’m very much addicted-girl.”

“Yeah, but… addicted to  _Spike_?” Willow asked. “Bleached. Sarcastic. Mean-jerk Spike? He tried to kill us, Buffy!”

“I know,” Buffy said. “I tried to kill him too, remember. Several times. I always failed. Now I’m kind of wondering if the suckage on the killing front was because a part of me knew, and maybe a part of him knew, too. We never could go through with it, either of us.”

“Because something always happened to prevent it,” Willow argued. “Extenuating circumstances, being what they are. Especially when living on the hellmouth.”

“My Mum trusts him, Will. She never liked Angel, but right from the start, she liked Spike.”

“Is she the best judge of character, though?” Willow asked seriously. “No disrespect to Joyce, but to trust Spike is akin to madness.”

“You’re starting to sound like Xander,” Buffy pouted.

“Sorry,” Willow sighed. “I just… I don’t want to see you get hurt, Buffy. You haven’t had the best run of luck when it comes to boys. I mean, there was Angel and then the whole Angelus debacle, and then there was I’m-a-creep-who-only-wants-to-score Parker, and then Couldn’t-handle-my-girlfriend-being-stronger-than-me Riley and I just… I don’t want you to… I don’t know…  _settle_  into anything with Spike just because the two ‘normal’ guys you tried things with were hopeless, and the previous vamp-boyfriend ended up being eviller than even Spike.”

“I’m not settling, Will,” Buffy admitting quietly. “The sides I’ve seen of Spike underneath all those fronts and the sarcasm and the cigarettes and the booze and the evil-doing are real, you know? Like, much with the realage.”

“Real how?” Willow frowned.

“You’ve seen glimpses of it too, Willow,” Buffy reminded her. “You remember how he was when he kidnapped you for that Love Spell?”

“Drunk and unstable?” Willow suggested.

“Broken,” Buffy corrected. “Hurt and broken and kind of pathetic because he loved her  _that_  much. For like a hundred and twenty years, he loved that crazy ho.”

“And you don’t think that’s foretelling that if she ever snaps her fingers and calls him back, he’ll go running?” Willow asked. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, but, I mean, can anyone love a person that long and that much, and really get over it?”

“You got over it with Oz after you met Tara,” Buffy reminded her.

“Did I, though?” Willow asked. “I was a horrible girlfriend who cheated on him and made out with Xander, and then couldn’t forgive him when he did the same with Veruca. And no matter how much I love Tara, a part of me still loves Oz. It always will.”

“And a part of Spike might always still love Drusilla,” Buffy nodded. “But, Will, that’s ok. Part of me still loves Angel and might very well always love him. A part of me will always love Riley, too. Letting someone into your heart like that makes it impossible to just yank them back out, no matter the viciousness of the rippage, and no matter the pain it causes.”

“And you’ve let Spike into your heart?”

Buffy sighed, nodding.

“And I didn’t even mean to,” she confessed. “I told myself it would just be sex and a proverbial scratch of an insatiable itch with someone who wouldn’t break in my arms or balk at my strength.”

“And now you love him?” Willow asked. “It could just be the happy endorphins from all that scratching. There  _has_  been a lot of itch-scratching going on with you two. Maybe you’re just high on the endorphins?”

“Really?” Buffy asked, raising her eyebrows doubtfully. “Do you doubt my ability to recognize love when I feel it?”

“No,” Willow shook her head sincerely. “I just… you’re the one always saying that vampires can’t feel love, remember? You maintained for so long that no matter what he said or did, Spike couldn’t love you. That he was just obsessed with you. What if you were right?”

Buffy shrugged her shoulders.

“What if I was, Will? It doesn’t change that I’ve fallen in love with him,” Buffy said.

“Even after all the ‘grrrr, arrgh’?” Willow asked. “After the orphanage plundering with Drusilla? The eating of nunneries with Angelus? The slaughter of so many innocents? Can you really love him after that? Would you still love him if you’d been there when he was doing them?”

“I wasn’t,” Buffy said. “And no matter what he’s done in the past, Will, who he was then and who he is now are decades – even a century – apart. He can’t take it back, can he?”

“And that just makes it okay?” Willow asked without heat, genuinely looking troubled rather than upset. “I couldn’t take back kissing Xander, but it still hurt Oz and Cordy, and it still fractured our relationships.”

“Yeah, but you learned from it, didn’t you?” Buffy asked her quietly, twisting her hands in her nap as they both sat cross-legged on Buffy’s bed with a bag of marshmallows between them. “You can’t take it back, but you’d never do that to someone you love ever again, would you?”

Willow sighed, conceding the point.

“I just… what if it’s not real, Buffy?” Willow asked. “I don’t want to see you get hurt again. I’ll even admit that over the past couple of years, Spike has grown on me, and I don’t want to see him get hurt, either. It hurt him when you were only using him for sex, Buffy, and if this is just a confusion of lust with eternal love, you might be setting yourselves up for more pain – pain that there might be no going back from.”

“I’m not,” Buffy said stubbornly. “But for argument’s sake, let’s say that I am. What am I supposed to do? Ignore these feelings and walk away? Find someone else? I tried that when I broke up with Angel, and it got me used by one jerk and heartbroken by another. What if what I have with Spike  _is_  real love, and I walk away because I’m too scared of being hurt? I can’t live my life like that, Will. I can’t just be afraid to fall for fear of the crash and burn.”

Willow bit her lip.

“But… Buffy… you  _know_  Spike. He’s not like Angel, who could just bottle it all up and brood and lurk in the shadows every now and then to see you get on with your life. He’s not like Riley either, with his up and run for the Amazonian jungle deal-age. Spike is… if you really do try this on for something more than casual sex… Spike will destroy you, Buffy.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” Buffy argued.

“This is a man whose solution to winning his ex-lover back was ‘tie her up and torture her until she loves me again’, Buffy,” Willow reminded her.

“Because Dru’s a crazy ho who  _likes_  being tortured and likes the evil and the pain and the twistiness,” Buffy argued. “He knows that would never work on me.”

“It’s not just you that I’m worried about,” Willow said softly, smiling gently.

“Spike?” Buffy guessed, surprised. “You’re worried about what  _I_  would do to him?”

Willow nodded.

“Say Drusilla came back and stole him away again… you’d hunt them both down and stake them, Buffy. And if you love him as much as you say… you’d never get over that,” she said gently.

“I doubt I’d be able to go through with it,” Buffy confessed quietly after a long pause where she gobbled up a marshmallow. “Think about it, Will. How many times over the years have Spike and I fought? How many times have I threatened to stake him? How many times has he threatened to drain me? But neither of us can ever do it. And Dru won’t come back. She says that when she looks at him, all she can see is me. She knows he loves me.”

“I wish there was some way we could find out,” Willow said, chewing a marshmallow thoughtfully. “You know? Like, a way to test if the reason you’ve never been able to kill each other was some… I don’t know… preordained hard-wiring in your brains.”

“That’d be kind of nifty,” Buffy smiled, nodding. “That’d be like…”

“Soulmates,” Willow finished for her.

“Though I supposed that sounds funny since he’s a vampire and I’m the Slayer,” Buffy said. “And you know, with the whole being soulless thing that vamps have going on.”

“Not necessarily,” Willow said. “We’ve learned that your Slayer powers are demonic in origin, after all. What if…? What if the demonic energies that vampires are before they become vampires when they inhabit a human body, and the demonic energy that your powers stem from, are… I don’t know… matched sets? The Thin Red Thread concept, but for demons.”

“Thin Red Thread?” Buffy asked, raising her eyebrows.

“The Red Thread of Fate,” Willow explained. “It’s a Chinese legend that the gods tie an invisible red thread around the ankles of those destined to meet one another in a certain situation or help each other in a certain way. Japanese and Korean cultures prefer the thought of the thread tying people by the pinky fingers. The legend claims that the god in charge of the thread is a lunar matchmaker god.”

“Sounds romantic,” Buffy said, smiling a little. “And probably just a fairytale.”

“I think we’ve had plenty of proof over the years that magic, and fate and fairytales are real in one way or another,” Willow said, grinning.

“And you think that Spike and I are one such red-thread-bound couple?” Buffy asked.

“It would explain why you always come together against all the odds, and why you can’t seem to kill each other,” Willow said. “How many times have you been at each other’s throats without actual slay-age? How many times does fate throw you together, so you have to cooperate, leading to this moment where you’re confessing me to that even though he’s an evil master vampire and you’re the Slayer, you think you love him?”

“How would we find out?” Buffy asked.

“There’s probably a spell,” Willow suggested, frowning thoughtfully. “But are you sure you’d want to try it? It might be a crock-load. Or, you know, he might be bound to Dru and you to Angel, or whatever. Will it change how you feel about him if we’re wrong?”

Buffy shrugged her shoulders.

“No,” she said. “Or… well… maybe it would, but it’d be better to know now, rather than to do something rash like rushing off and telling him that I think I’m in love with him.”

“Yeah, knowing him, he’d probably suggest a Claim between you, or something,” Willow teased gently.

“Probably,” Buffy said, grinning a little bit. “I want to know. How can we know?”

“Let’s go to the Magic Box,” Willow suggested, smiling. “I’d kind of like to know if I’ve got a red thread, myself.”


	2. Part I

“Willow?” Buffy breathed, her voice thick with tears and her face stinging with the cascades of them that poured down her cheeks. “Willow, do you remember that spell we suggested so long ago?”

Willow looked over at her crying best friend, her brow furrowed.

“I’ve suggested lots of spells over the years, Buffy. Were you thinking of a certain one in particular?” Willow said, smiling sadly at the heartbroken Slayer.

The crater of Sunnydale haunted her nightmares, but they were nothing compared to the agony Buffy seemed to feel over the sacrifice Spike had made. For weeks since fleeing to England with Giles, Buffy had been a complete wreck, breaking down in tears when she thought no one could hear the screams she uttered into her pillow.

“Red Thread,” Buffy croaked, more tears dribbling down her cheeks. “We… never finished it.”

“We didn’t have the right ingredients,” Willow remembered, recalling the spell from so long ago before… everything. Before losing Tara. Before Willow’s magic addiction. Before Xander and Anya’s wedding disaster. Before Spike had regained his soul for Buffy and become the Champion. Before Buffy’s heart had imploded beneath Sunnydale along with the blond vampire. “There was something missing, wasn’t there? And Anya said she couldn’t order whatever it was because they were really rare.”

“The crystalized heart of a virgin Hvroth demon,” Buffy answered quietly before reaching under her pillow and withdrawing a glass jar containing something that glowed bright purple and glittered in the weak British sunlight pouring through the window.

Willow’s eyes widened.

“Where did you get it?” Willow asked, frowning at the distraught young woman before her.

“I hunted it,” Buffy answered dully. “And I accept all consequences for what I’ve done.”

“What do you mean?” Willow frowned. “What consequences.”

“The heart was needed for it’s purity,” Buffy said dully. “Hvroth demons are peaceful. To find one that was also virginal… I… I found a very young one. And I slaughtered it. I expect all rights to return to heaven have been tossed aside after that, but I don’t care. I  _need_  to know, Will.”

“Buffy…” Willow said quietly. “I… I’m not even sure the spell would work anymore. With Spike… gone… the thread is likely severed.”

“Then send me back,” Buffy begged, offering her the jar. “Send me back to a time before he was gone and cast it. I have to know. I have to… God, Will. I can’t… it hurts  _so_  much.”

Willows eyes welled with tears, recalling the all too bitter agony of her own lover’s death. Buffy crawled forward, begging on her knees for help.

“I… can try,” Willow offered weakly, seeing how desperately Buffy needed this; knowing how desperately she’d needed something magical to provide some outlet for her pain when Tara had been killed. “I… there’s a spell I know that could let you… go back… I learned it after Tara’s death. It’s rooted in Earth magic, so it’s mostly safe.”

“What do I have to do?” Buffy asked, wiping at her eyes quickly, hope flaring in her chest at the thought of some means to send her back into Spike’s arms.

“Well, I’m not so certain that the thread – if there was a thread – wouldn’t have been severed with… William’s death.”

“In Sunnydale?” Buffy clarified, wiping her eyes.

“No… No, not Spike’s death,” Willow said gently. “William’s. The human he was before he became a vampire.”

“But you said that it might be our demons that are connected,” Buffy pointed out.

Willow frowned.

“Well, I could… send you back to when his demon was spawned. Or, well, when William Pratt the human man became William the Bloody, vampire fledgling.”

“Can you do the two spells at the same time?” Buffy wanted to know.

“No,” Willow shook her head. “But, if there  _is_  a thread, and you were to run into Spike in his time before Sunnydale, before over a century as an evil vampire, and he still couldn’t kill you even at the height of his most evil times, it would certainly indicate that you are connected.”

“Do it,” Buffy nodded.

“Buffy…” Willow said weakly. “Even if I can… I can’t bring him back. The Urn of Osiris was destroyed by those biker demons when we did your resurrection spell. Even if you  _are_  bound to one another, he’s… gone. Forever. You understand that, don’t you?”

Buffy closed her eyes.

“Send me back,” Buffy whispered. “I’ll… I’ll do anything, Will. I need to see him. I need to hold him. I need to tell him that I love him. That being without him is destroying me.”

“He won’t know you, Buffy,” Willow reminded her gently. “Spike in 1900 won’t have any idea who you are. He won’t  _be_  the Spike you love, yet.”

“I don’t care,” Buffy whispered. “I don’t… I can’t… I  _need_  him, Willow. I want him back.”

“I’ve sworn off Resurrection spells,” Willow reminded her.

“I don’t need you to resurrect him,” Buffy said. “If I can… if he knows I love him, maybe… he won’t let me die the first time. Without that, The First won’t have gained a foothold, and he won’t have to die. Willow, please. Please. I’m begging you. I’ll do anything.”

“Time travel is really dangerous, Buffy,” Willow warned her. “Not so much for you, though if you die there, then the future could unravel. But anything you change, anywhere in time, could have monumental effects. If you arrived in 1900 London and found Spike and confessed undying love for him, he might never spend the next century loving Dru, and he might never end up coming to Sunnydale looking for Angel to cure her, and then you’d never meet him. The laws of time dictate that anything you change will automatically  _try_  to right itself. Time isn’t so much a linear thing as a raging tidal wave plunging ever onward and small changes you make, like blipping into existence and out again without changing anything other than being there, won’t make much different.

“But if you, say, saved someone from being eaten by a vampire, time would attempt to correct the mistake. If he was fated to die, he will still die, just in a different way, maybe at a different time. But if in between when he should have died and when he does die, that man discovers something, or sires a new life, or something to that effect, the tidal wave of time-space can’t undo those things. Do you understand? I expect that confessing your love to Spike would change his feelings for Dru, and while he might still end up with her for all those years if you blip back out of existence, something like that would leave a mark. He’d still know. The force of love leaves huge markers than can completely interrupt the path time is supposed to wage. He might instead seek you out sooner, or not bother coming to Sunnydale at all if he loves you instead of Drusilla by the time that he  _should_  be arriving there.”

“That’d hurt less,” Buffy whispered, one hand clawing desperately at her chest.

As she did so, Willow noticed that her blouse pulled to one side and revealed bruising and scratches in the area around her heart as though Buffy had been trying to claw the aching, shattered muscle from within her chest.

Sighing, and knowing all too well that pain – knowing how her friends had loved her and supported her through that horror – Willow gave in.

“I’ll do it,” she nodded. “But… you can’t go dressed like that. You’ll stand out too much. We need to get you something to suit the timeline, so they don’t immediately string you up for a harlot with you skin on display and your pant-wearing. Oh, but this spell means you can stop numerous times on the way back… so you’ll need something that will morph into the fashion of whatever era you land in. Hang on, let me conjure something.”

Buffy looked down at herself before nodding, and getting to her feet, willing to sacrifice the comfort of Spike’s shirt for a Victorian era dress if it would mean she got to see Spike again. She only hoped that this time when she donned one, she wouldn’t end up a hapless damsel all over again.


	3. Part II

Time travel hurt. Willow had insisted that Buffy would need something of Spike’s that would guide them to his time-line, and then allow them to work their way back along it right to the very beginning. She’d known just the thing. The journal he’d been lugging around since he’d still just been William Pratt. It was tattered, the leather-bound cover bruised, and the pages dog-eared, but it would do.

Willow had guided the spell, binding Buffy to the book and its bearer before seeming to delve into the roots of the earth, pulling on tendrils of magic and time, and whizzing Buffy back through the years. She’d been very specific when informing Buffy that she would be in charge of when and where she stopped, and it’d been so hard whizzing through the recent years and their whirlwind of a relationship during the time she had known him. It was harder still watching what came before it; nights he’d spent pleasuring Drusilla. Nights he’d spent slaughtering and butchering and massacring. Nights he’d spent drinking and alone, seeming in agony. She witnessed it all in hyper-speed.

His fight against Nikki Wood. His role during each of the World Wars and the absolute chaos he and Drusilla had wreaked. Even his fight with Xin Rong. Buffy almost stopped it then, gritting her teeth through the scene he had once so vividly described to her when he’d shagged Dru right by the corpse of the first Slayer he had slain.

But Buffy wanted more. She wanted the beginning. And what was more, she knew she could have it. Willow had told her that sending her back whilst anchoring her to the book meant that every year that she went back was one more Willow would need to reel her back from. Like a hook on a fisherman’s line, Willow had told her. The magic would link them, and Buffy would have ten instances. Ten chances to stop, but she could only stop on the way back. Bumping over rocks like a sinker as the line was reeled in.

And so, she kept going. Beyond the death of Xin and back further. Buffy was horrified when she witnessed Angelus’s molding of Spike into the evil creature he’d become. The torture and the beatings. The cruelty. The way he taunted him by shagging Drusilla right in front of him, knowing how Spike had begun to care for the woman who’d gifted him immortality.

Finally, she settled on a night in 1885, London. Whispering the words that brought her to a screaming halt. Buffy materialized in an alley in London where she knew Spike would wind up. The landing hurt. Like slamming into a brick wall, her head spun dizzily from the many years she’d whizzed through at light-speed and Buffy groaned, leaning against the wall and trying to catch her breath.

When the spinning stopped, Buffy straightened her ruffled skirts, cursing the fashion of the era when she saw the state of the sidewalk and the way it immediately began to stain the hems of her dress. They hadn’t technically been able to find something, especially when Willow had told her she could stop ten times on her way back, that would suit every era so Willow had cast a spell on her outfit to ensure she would fit in perfectly with whichever time she made a pit-stop.

“Much with the ewww,” Buffy muttered when she strolled out into the street and spied piles of horse-dung from the horse-drawn carts of the age.

Unescorted and wandering the streets after nightfall, Buffy immediately drew attention from passersby and she squared her shoulders, heading in the direction of an establishment she had seen in her time-travel was a frequent watering hole and hunting ground for Spike and his vampire family. A well-to-do club of some kind where live music was performed, and where upstanding rich folk came to enjoy the music and the company. Angelus’s influence, Buffy suspected. From what she’d seen of him through Spike’s timeline, before he’d been cursed with his soul, he’d striven to be a better man in death than he’d ever been in life and insisted on dressing impeccably and frequenting snooty places he’d have been turned away from as a human.

Entering alone drew her many a look, but Buffy was uninterested in the judgement of ancient people, long-dead. Her eyes scanned the crowd, automatically seeking out Spike’s head of peroxide blond hair before recalling that he hadn’t implemented that look until the 1960s.

Narrowing her eyes and scanning again, she sought out the most depraved and the most beautiful faces in the crowd and suddenly, it wasn’t so hard to spot them. There was Drusilla, looking unfairly regal all dressed in black lace, her waifish figure further accentuated by the corset that had no effect on her lack of requirement for oxygen and was, as such, cinched impossibly tight. She was darkly beautiful, Buffy thought begrudgingly as she watched the insane vampiress throw her head back laughing at something no one else seemed privy to.

And there was Darla, her perfectly painted face a bright point in the candle-light; her blood red dress eye-catching and daring to show off her hiked-high cleavage, her corset laced even tighter than Dru’s. Her eyes were dancing over the many men frequenting the establishment despite the angelic face of the man at her side. No doubt seeking her next victim.

Buffy saw the minute Angelus caught his eyes upon her, and she recognized the utterly evil smile that curved his mouth as he traced his gaze over her from head to foot. Seven years ago, that brooding way he tipped his chin and watched her through his eyelashes would’ve been her undoing and Slayer or not, she’d have fallen for that beatific face of his. But not now. Not when her heart had been bruised by him a time too many, and her life controlled by him ‘for her own good’ via his possessive and meddlesome nature once too often.

She was tempted to stake him where he stood, but she wouldn’t. Not when Spike still needed him to shape William the Bloody into the Spike that Buffy had grown to love. For a long moment, she defiantly held Angel’s gaze, daring him to walk over, even knowing she was playing with fire. He licked his lips and even from across the crowded and noisy tavern, she could hear his low and nasty chuckle when she curled her lip like she’d suddenly smelled something foul.

She pointedly took her eyes off him, but never for a second lost track of where he was, not trusting him in the slightest not to try something with her. She had more exciting prey to locate, however, and Buffy’s eyes continued to scan the room as she moved further into the bar, seeking out Spike. He wasn’t standing close to his sire, grandsire, or great-grandsire when she finally did lay eyes on him and Buffy’s heart almost stopped inside her chest.

She wondered if he could hear the way it tripped and skipped out an uneven beat at the sight he made.

“Always have to be perfectly rebellious, don’t you?” Buffy murmured softly as she drank in the sight of him.

Still so new to being a vampire, his hair was the soft golden brownish blond it’d been during his human life, cut short in the back – shorter than the other men’s and far shorter that Angel’s – while he wore the front long, one wavy section falling into his handsome face that was all sharp cheek-bones and pouty lips. His eyes lit her on fire, that bright azure shade of them lit from within in a way she’d never seen on any other vampire. Where Dru and Angel and most vampires might walk and talk and bite, their skin was pale, and their eyes somewhat dulled with their lack of life when they weren’t in game-face.

But not Spike.

The life in his eyes was a reflection of just how much of William Pratt her Spike had retained, flittering and gleaming like sapphires in the sun, brimming with a thirst for life and a defiance that, she didn’t doubt, unsettled most people. The last time she’d been looking in those eyes, Spike had been in agony, accusing her of lying about loving him, but thanking her for the sentiment just the same.

She wondered, as she met his gaze a hundred and twenty years in the past – for the very first time from his perspective - if he could see the love that she’d tried to throw at him then. The heart inside her chest had been so shattered and destroyed since his sacrifice, and yet the sight of him now was melding it back together. God, that defiant look. She wanted to run across the tavern and fling herself into his arms. She wanted to shower his handsome face with kisses and unleash the litany of loving declarations that had always caught in her throat back in Sunnydale. She wanted to make sure he would always know his value; know he was loved; she wanted to make sure he would never leave her.

But William the Bloody didn’t know her. He was just a fledgling vampire five years into his immortality, hungry for his next kill. He met her gaze as she drank him in – unrefined as ever, having forgone the neck-tie and top-hat the other men in the tavern sported. Even as she looked at him, loving him from the very depths of her soul, she kind of missed her punk-rock lover. He curled his tongue behind his teeth, his eyes dragging over her from head to toe and glittering with hunger and desire that she was sure would’ve made any other woman of the era blush.

Not Buffy.

God, she  _quivered_  beneath that look. She’d missed it entirely too much and Spike’s left eyebrow – currently without the scar he wouldn’t earn for another fifteen years – quirked curiously when she didn’t blush or look away; when her stomach tensed, and her thighs pressed together against the almost painful throb between her legs. Realizing she was standing just inside the door and hadn’t bothered to venture further into the tavern to seek out a drink or friends – having neither money nor friends who knew her in this time – Buffy let her lips pull into a gluttonously flirtatious smile, knowing Spike wouldn’t be able to resist.

He’d always told her that when she smiled at him like that, she glowed like the sun and Buffy watched it dazzle him the minute he registered it. Moving deeper into the tavern, unsure what she should do without money to buy herself a drink and no one to meet, Buffy simply moved through the place slowly, her eyes lingering on Spike too long when, out the corner of her eye, she watched Darla suddenly stiffen and begin to look around.

Ah. She’d moved within range for the vampires to feel the tinglies she gave off as the Slayer. And Darla and Angel were both old enough to recognize them for what they were. She kept moving, ducking her head a little and trying to make herself seem demure and unimportant, not at all wanting to draw their attention. Unbidden, her eyes traced over Darla, Angelus and Drusilla as they all grew tense and began searching the pub in earnest.

Fortunately, thanks to the way Angel had leered at her for so long when she’d walked in, he seemed to dismiss her as the source of the tingles because she’d been there too long, supposedly, to be the one emitting them. Buffy ducked her head, smirking when she watched the way, despite all their preening and perfect seduction, the three of them fell to sniffing the air like blood hounds in search of the Slayer in their midst. When she reached the bar, Buffy gambled on the fact that glasses of water were free back home, and asked the barkeep for one.

She received an incredibly disapproving look from the man and Buffy realized with a start that she was the only woman standing at the bar. The rest were seated throughout the tavern and men waited on them like proper gentlemen.

“Get her the drink, Frankie-boy,” Spike’s low, cockney’s accented voice filtered past her ear when Buffy defiantly stared down the barkeep the same way she would with Willy back home. “And make it whiskey. Two of them. Neat.”

Frankie, the barkeep, cowered when facing off against Spike and while the feminist in her was crying out in defiance, the rest of her was too busy glorying in the sound of Spike’s voice. God, she’d thought she might die without ever hearing it again and, unchecked, tears prickled behind her eyes.

“Thank you,” Buffy murmured softly, the tingle running up her spine indicating that Spike was standing behind her.

“Pleasure’s all mine, ducks,” Spike said, and Buffy quivered again, unable to resist turning to look up at him.

Like a gentleman, he currently stood with a respectable three feet separating them, but his eyes were fixed on her, his stare intent.

She could tell that he was waiting for her to recoil in horror over his accent and his supposedly low-birth based on his attire when she seemed for all the world a respectable young lady of this time, but Buffy couldn’t. She wanted to get closer. God, she wanted to climb him and wrap her legs around him. She wanted to hold him to her and never let him go.

“Not yet, surely,” Buffy said, her mouth pulling into a smile all over again as she registered what he’d said. “I’m pretty sure your pleasure lies beyond the assisting of a lady buying a drink.”

For a moment, a completely wicked smirk flashed across his face.

“You don’t think me an upstanding gent, bent on a lady’s pleasure?” Spike challenged.

Buffy’s laugh was low and husky when it came.

“I entirely believe the second part to be true,” she said, uncaring that he would know she was American, and that he would know she was not at all of this era. “I’m certain you dedicate yourself to ensuring a lady’s all-consuming pleasure.”

Spike’s eyes widened in surprise at her boldness and Buffy smiled all over again, only too pleased to have shocked him and to dazzle him.

“You are… a most intriguin’ bird, love,” Spike said, his voice lowering.

Buffy practically preened beneath the praise even though a woman at a table nearby them overheard and gasped, clearly scandalized.

“Your drinks, Master Spike,” Frankie the barkeep interrupted before she could reply, and Buffy knew Spike took great pleasure in stepping closer under the pretense of reaching for the glasses of whiskey.

He flicked the man a shilling and leaned back, offering Buffy one of the glasses.

“Promise you won’t laugh?” Buffy asked as she took it, knowing that if it was anything like the whiskey he drank back home, she was going to hate the flavor and shudder after downing it.

“Beg pardon?” Spike asked, clearly confused and a little wrong footed by her lack of proper English poshness.

Buffy held out the glass, waiting for him to chink his own against it.

“To you, Spike,” Buffy said softly.

Spike raised one eyebrow at her again, seeming all the more surprised by her words and her knowing his name and leaving off the ‘master’ bit.

She smiled one more time before tipping the glass to her lips and throwing back the whiskey in two long gulps.

“Blurgh!” she said, her tongue hanging out as she shuddered at the wretched burn.

Spike choked on his own mouthful in his shock before he laughed, long and loud at her lack of ladylike manners.

“Burns every time,” Buffy told him, shuddering again and reaching behind her to set her glass back on the bar now that it was empty.

“You are without a doubt the oddest bird I’ve ever met, pet,” Spike informed her.

“And you haven’t even officially met me, yet,” Buffy said, pleased with her own inside joke. “Look me up someday, huh? Maybe we’ll dance.”

Before he could recover and offer some semblance of manners or a formal introduction – she didn’t want to give him her name when he might then look up her ancestors once she disappeared to show up again later in his time line – Buffy carefully smoothed her warm hand over his bared forearm thanks to the way he’d rolled his sleeves up. He seemed shocked when she didn’t jump at the cold temperature of his skin, only giving his arm a little squeeze before she turned and walked away.

She didn’t want to leave. She’d love to stay all night and drink and dance and flirt with him, but Angel was headed their way, the Whirlwind clearly concerned about the feel of a Slayer in their midst that they couldn’t locate.

“Oi, where are you going, pet?” Spike called quietly, making like he might follow her.

“William, m’boy, we’d best away,” Angel’s thickly accented Irish voice interrupted, and Buffy looked back to see him grip Spike’s shoulder tight enough that Spike actually winced. “There’s trouble afoot.”

“We ain’t started nothin’ yet,” Spike argued, clearly enjoying playing up his own accent to annoy his grandsire.

“There’s a Slayer here,” Angel argued quietly, his eyes darting around and narrowing when they landed on Buffy again where she was looking back at Spike and trying to resist the urge to blow him a kiss.

“What the bleedin’ hell’s a Slayer?” Spike demanded.

Buffy turned away before Angel could ask questions or grow any more curious about her, exiting the tavern quietly and wondering whether she should activate the spell to travel forward in time now that she’d had her first meeting with Spike. She didn’t know if she could do it. She couldn’t be sure yet if he would or wouldn’t have attacked her and tried to eat her. She wanted proof of a red thread between them, and damn it, she was going to get it.

Strolling away down the street, Buffy had too much fun leaving him a scent trail to follow, tracing her fingers along sooty brickwork and touching crates and lamp posts and the like as she headed back toward the alley where she’d landed. She knew he would eventually wind up there tonight. She’d seen it as she time travelled. He would shortly chase his dinner into that very same alley and Buffy was only too willing to lie in wait for him there.

She wondered how badly it might affect things if she saved the humans he would hunt tonight, supposing that they could drastically alter history if they instead lived to breed or make discoveries or god new what else. Buffy wondered if it would make her a bad Slayer should she stand by and let him eat them. Willow had only told her not to meddle because she might mess something up too badly and make it so Spike never came to Sunnydale. She’d said that unless it was after Spike came to town, she should leave things be as much as she could.

She smiled to herself as she strolled the streets of London, leading Spike on a merry chase should he decide to follow her trail, before wandering back into the alley. She carefully withdrew her stake from the folds of her dress and began using it to pick her nails where she’d gotten soot under them whilst sitting on an overturned wooden vegetable crate.

It didn’t take long before rapid footsteps began to sound and Buffy looked up in time to see a man dart into the alley, looking terrified out of his mind. He didn’t notice her where she sat before he dove behind an old wine barrel, wiggling himself in behind it like that might hide or protect him from the vampire on the hunt. Cold tingles raced up her spine, so familiar to her in their unique signature that she knew it was Spike long before he prowled around the corner in full game face.

He was scenting the air as he came and he stopped short, clearly picking up her scent and that of the human hiding behind the barrel. His eyes glowed a feral yellow in the dark of the alley and Buffy watched him scan it with his eyes for some sign of his prey before they came to rest upon her. Quickly, his game face melted away and he curled his tongue behind his teeth, obviously able to see her and thinking that in the dark alley, she couldn’t see him.

“Did you get turned around, pet?” he asked conversationally as he swaggered into the alley.

Buffy couldn’t hold back a wicked grin.

“Oh, I must have, Spike,” she replied, and she heard his footsteps falter a little that she knew him by voice and was playing along with him, rather than being a terrified lady of high birth and demanding to know who was there.

The human behind the barrel whimpered, obviously fearful of a trap.

“What are you doing sittin’ on a crate in a back alley then, love?” Spike asked. “Know there’s something special about you. Why don’t you tell me what?”

Buffy raised her eyebrows.

“And ruin all the fun?” she asked, smiling as she rose to her felt and tilted her eyes to look at him as he strolled closer.

“Vixen,” he accused softly, the human he’d been chasing shuffling further behind his barrel like it would save him.

“Are you going to eat that?” Buffy asked quietly.

“Was thinkin’ about it,” Spike said. “Why? You hungry, love? You can have him if you like.”

“How noble of you,” Buffy rolled her eyes, her voice dripping sarcasm at the way he was fishing. He’d mistaken her for a vamp, it would seem. Buffy wondered if she should be offended.

“I’m a decent bloke like that,” Spike said cockily.

“Decent blokes ask ladies to dance,” Buffy pretended to pout.

“You didn’t give me the chance back at the tavern, pet,” Spike argued. “Made your suggestion and trailed off, didn’t you?”

“I’d hate to be too forward,” Buffy pretended.

“Somehow, love, I don’t think that you would,” Spike said, coming closer. “Hmmm, never met a vamp with a heartbeat before.”

“I’m not a vamp,” Buffy said.

“No?” he asked, closing in on her.

Buffy began to move, slowly moving to the middle of the alley and readying herself for a fight.

“It’s almost adorable how little you know yet, Spike,” Buffy told him softly.

“You’re a human,” he said quietly, tipping his head and listening. “Witch? Unusual for one of your kind to know what I am and be cornered in a place like this but still have a heartbeat steady as a metronome.”

“I think I’m offended that you don’t imagine me to be special,” Buffy said, smirking into the darkness and knowing he would see it.

“Oh, you’re special,” Spike said. “Come here, love. Let me show you how special.”

He melted back into game face and lunged for her. And he stumbled clumsily when Buffy moved like lightning, stepping out of the way of his attack.

“Oh dear,” Buffy said. “I hope I haven’t lured myself a clumsy dance partner.”

Spike growled at her.

“You know, you seemed quite the odd and adorable lady back at the tavern,” Spike said, righting himself and spinning toward her again.

“And now you doubt your judgement?” Buffy asked, dashing up behind the human with his barrel and ripping it aside.

He squealed in terror and Buffy kicked him up the bum.

“Run, you idiot,” she told him, unable to keep from saving the human from the hungry vampire after all.

“Oi, that’s my dinner,” Spike protested.

“Mmm, too bad,” Buffy hummed, turning to smirk at him and tapping her finger against her smiling lips. “Wherever will you find someone else to snack on?”

“Oh, I can think of someone I’d like to sink my teeth into,” Spike replied.

“Flatterer,” she smirked, and just like that they began to dance.

And it was glorious.

Buffy wanted to cry with the return of their sparring, having feared she would never again fight her equal after his sacrifice. She laughed out loud as they parried and struck, kicked and punched, dancing ruthlessly there in the dark of the alley.

“Who  _are_  you?” Spiked asked when he slammed back against the far wall after a well placed kick connected with his chest.

“Oh,  _now_  you want to do introductions,” Buffy taunted him, lunging for him again.

“Is that a stake in your hand, baby?” Spike asked, tipping his head to the side as his hand shot up to catch the blow she aimed at him whilst holding it.

“I never said we’d be dancing the foxtrot,” Buffy said.

He kept his grip on her wrist, yanking her closer by it and Buffy swung at him with the other hand, catching him across the jaw.

“Bloody bitch,” Spike growled, his eyes flashing at her.

Beyond their alley, the human she’d chased off screamed and came running back in, this time with what looked like three fledges chasing him.

“Your work?” Buffy asked, pausing in the fight against him to press close, unable to resist the allure of feeling his long, sinuous frame pressing gloriously against her own.

“Not much for bothering with all that,” Spike said, seeming surprised to have her so close.

“Small mercies, I suppose,” Buffy mused, leaning in close and burying her nose against the hollow of his throat where his shirt hung open at the neck thanks to his lack of a tie.

“Having fun there, pet?” Spike asked, his grip on her staking hand loosening as she breathed him in.

He didn’t smell of the cologne or the soap she was accustomed to, but beneath those new smells there was still whiskey, and smoke, and blood and that purely masculine scent she could never name but had come to associate with Spike.

“God, I love that smell,” Buffy muttered, her mouth against his neck and Spike’s free hand came up to rest intimately on her waist.

“Arrgghh!” the human behind her screamed as the three vamps chasing him caught him and set upon him, draining him rapidly.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Buffy sighed, sagging against Spike for a moment before pushing away from him. “We were having a moment here, people! Could you be less with the scream-age and the feasting?”

Spike snorted behind her as Buffy yanked out of his grip and, quick as lightning, pounced at the posse of vampires, staking all three in quick succession when they were too caught up feeding to put up a fight.

Spike’s eyes were wide when she looked back at him, stake raised threateningly.

“ _Slayer_ ,” he breathed in recognition before a determined glint came into his eyes.

“And the cookie for quickest on the uptake goes to…” Buffy smirked. “Still want to dance, William?”

“You know me?” Spike asked, looking slightly concerned by that knowledge.

“Better than you know yourself, lover,” Buffy said under her breath. “Come on, Spike. Don’t you know it’s rude to leave a lady hanging when she asks you to dance?”

“Hunting me, Slayer?” he challenged, shaking off the shock and looking like all bets were off.

“What if I am?” Buffy asked.

“Going to drain you, ducks. Gonna drink you down and tell everyone that I bagged myself a Slayer. Then we’ll see if old grandsire still thinks he’s the high and mighty o’ the coven.”

Buffy rolled her eyes.

“Come on then, tough guy. Show me what you’ve got,” Buffy said.

“You’re a Yank,” Spike said, lunging at her and slinging a punch. He wasn’t as good yet as he would one day be, but then, he’d only been a vamp for five years now, rather than a hundred and twenty.

“And you’re an upstanding Prospective gentleman of London with a fake cockney accent and all the rebelliousness of a fledge,” Buffy said.

“Oi,” Spike said, stopping suddenly. “How do you know about that? No one knows about that. Not even Dru.”

“Oh, Spike,” Buffy said. “You could fill this barrel with all the things I know about you that Drusilla doesn’t,” she said, kicking the wine barrel that had doubled as a human shield earlier directly at the vampire and smirking when it connected, winding him.

“Who  _are_  you?” he demanded, looking defiant and angry now.

“You’ll find out,” Buffy told him.

“Gonna let me live?” Spike asked. “Shame I can’t say the same for you, love.”

He dove back into the fighting and while he wasn’t as good as he would one day be, he was pretty damn good, just the same. Buffy, hindered herself by the ridiculous skirts of her dress, found that they were still matched. Impossibly so when, a short time later, he slammed her up against the wall, one hand wrapped around her throat, the other pinning her non-staking hand to the wall above her head. Meanwhile, Buffy’s stake was poised over his heart, just daring him to push further.

“Bloody hell,” Spike said, breathing hard despite not needing the oxygen. “The race of your heart is driving me mad.”

“Mmmm, you want to know what all that blood pumping through my veins tastes like, don’t you?” Buffy challenged.

“God, yeah,” Spike confessed, groaning and leaning closer, breathing in her scent like he couldn’t get enough of it.

His lower half was pinning her body to the wall, his hips pressed intimately to hers despite the thick folds of her dress. Buffy couldn’t resist arching into him just a little.

“You want to bite me, Spike?” Buffy challenged, tipping her head to the side.

“Yeah,” Spike nodded, leaning closer, close enough that the tip of his tongue ghosted over her skin at her neck. The stake poised over his heart was surely digging into him through his shirt, but he didn’t seem to care.

“You want to kill me?” Buffy asked him softly, tipping her eyes up to peer into his face curiously.

Spike drew back a little, dragging his eyes from her pulse to meet her gaze.

“Wouldn’t mind baggin’ a Slayer,” he confessed. “But then who would I dance with?”

Buffy’s lips pulled up at the corners and he blinked as though her smile stunned him.

“Might let you sip, if you promise to stop when I say,” Buffy offered quietly.

“What? A Slayer offering her neck to a vamp?” Spike snorted. “Thought you lot were supposed to be the boogey-man to us demon types.”

“Oh, I am,” Buffy murmured. “But not to you.”

“What’s so special ‘bout me then?” Spike wanted to know, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Buffy smiled.

“The answer lies in a Chinese legend,” she whispered to him unable to resist rolling her hips against his. “Go on, Spike. Prove you don’t want to lose a dance partner.”

She offered him her neck willingly, hungry for the ecstasy of his fangs in her veins.

“You going to dust me like you did them?” he nodded toward the piles of dust where she’d killed the others.

“Only if you don’t stop when you should,” Buffy said.

Spike weighed the concept for a moment before his impulsiveness won out and she sighed her pleasure when he leaned in and bit into the side of her throat with less care than she was used to, but probably a lot more restraint than he offered his victims. He groaned as her blood passed his lips, his grip on her wrist loosening while the hand he’d been using to choke her instead slipped up to cradle her cheek, tilting her head to better receive his bite. Starbursts of pleasure exploded behind her eyes as he drew her blood into him hungrily, sucking hard and drinking deeply while her freed hand slid down to tangle in his short curls, holding him to her neck with one hand while the other remained resolutely around the stake poised over his heart.

Spike’s hips bucked as the aphrodisiac effect of her blood hit him full force and a ragged gasp tore from Buffy’s throat at the feel of his arousal against her once more. Gods, how she’d ached for that these past few months without him.

“What’ve you caught there, Spike, m’boy?” Angelus’s voice invaded on the delicious moment and Spike pulled back from her throat with a territorial growl.

“Never has decent timing, does he?” Buffy grumbled.

“Can say that again, pet,” Spike muttered in response, clearly wary of his sire as he leaned in and licked the puncture wounds on her throat closed. “Seems like you’re done for now, Slayer. He has no restraint.”

“ _He_  is a lousy dance partner,” Buffy replied, using her grip on his hair to turn his eyes from Angelus and back to her.

He met her gaze looking like he wanted to drink more of her blood.

“He’s a lousy everythin’,” Spike said. “But you don’t see anyone listening to me, do you?”

“Fools, all of them,” Buffy told him, smiling gently. “Admirable restraint from you, too. Mmmm, can you maintain it?”

“No point now,” Spike said. “Not with him here. Better I drink more from you, then you won’t feel it when he starts having his special brand of  _fun_  with you.”

Buffy knew exactly what kind of  _fun_  Angelus liked to have with his young female victims.

“ _He_  can piss off,” Buffy grinned, and Spike’s eyes widened to hear a lady swear. “I’ll be seeing you, Spike.”

He frowned when Buffy reached up on her toes and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, unwilling to kiss his lips when they were sticky with her blood. Before he could ask any more questions or Angelus could get any closer, Buffy reached for the magic tethering her, the tendril of fishing line that would hurl her back home, just the way Willow had showed her, hauling herself back into the time-space continuum and melting right out of Spike’s arms.


End file.
